When Macklemore found fame in the early 2010s, he did so swaggering through Goodwill aisles in a tiger-print fur coat. His 2012 earworm “Thrift Shop” — built around a jaunty saxophone hook with the famous refrain “I’m gonna pop some tags / Only got $20 in my pocket” — was completely inescapable. It spent six weeks at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Chart, and won him a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song, Rap Performance and Best Rap Album for The Heist, beating out Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city in the latter category. Macklemore had other major hits — most notably the high-energy locker-room anthem “Can’t Hold Us” and the socially conscious “Same Love” — but none quite matched the cultural ubiquity of “Thrift Shop”. It seemed as though he was destined to be synonymous with the cringe of 2010s pop culture (a fever dream defined by LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”), and unable to break into the 2020s mainstream.
That was until last week, when the rapper found himself at the center of an international controversy after he was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. stadium tour over his onstage calls for a “free Palestine.” Macklemore had told the crowd that he wanted the people of Gaza and “the occupied West Bank” to know “we have not forgotten about them.” His comments were branded hateful by Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft and organizations including the Israeli-American Council and the Anti-Defamation League, which called them “completely unacceptable” and accused the rapper of antisemitism. Kraft told Sheeran the show would be cancelled if Macklemore remained on the bill. So he went.
